With the recent and ever-increasing interest in architecture and home design among the general public, many non-professional architecture and home design enthusiasts are engaging in activities that provide them with more access to home design-focused information, learning and experiential interaction. For example, the popularity and success of design-focused media properties such as Dwell and Surface magazines, HGTV and TLC television networks, and the plethora of home design software applications and online house plan resellers all attest to the growing desire among design enthusiasts to engage in activities that unlock and empower their inner architect. For many people, designing their dream home is a life-long passion, whether the end result is a purely aspirational pursuit or an actual planned objective.
For these people, architectural scale models would be extremely useful in the planning and design of buildings, room layouts, decorating schemes, and the like, because they give physical and visual three-dimensional impressions of prospective full-scale structures. They can also facilitate the creative design process by enabling the designer to portray various layouts and design schemes in order to adjust and fine-tune their vision into a final shape and form.
For these reasons professional architects often create custom architectural scale models in order to effectively present their designs to clients. Architects utilize a variety of materials, including foam board, mat board, balsa wood and basswood, to construct their custom models from scratch and by hand. However, the materials and processes involved in constructing these custom models require a significant level of skill, time, and expense, and are not suitable or realistic methods for enthusiasts to attempt creating models of their own designs, nor would they provide what needs to be a user-friendly and timesaving experience.
It is clear then that the impressions and visual impact made possible with three-dimensional physical scale models cannot be achieved to the same extent and effectiveness with hand-drafted blueprint and computer-generated renderings.
Indeed, while pencil and paper facilitate two-dimensional drafting of floor plans and elevations and computer software applications enable three-dimensional renderings on screen, neither provides the enthusiast with the tools to easily create a physical architectural scale model with accurate wall thickness, ceiling heights, roof angles, door and window openings, and other architectural design elements that can be touched, studied and displayed.
For instance, with regard to a computer software application disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,975,908, issued Nov. 2, 1999 to A. Hulten, a method for constructing a physical scale model of a structure utilizing a computer is presented. However, multiple time consuming steps must be taken before the architect or designer is able to begin construction of the scale model. Indeed, views of the interior and exterior walls of the structure must first be printed out on adhesive-backed paper, the pieces of paper bearing the printed views of the structure must then be affixed to pieces of rigid stock such as cardboard or foam core to create walls, and then cutting or trimming the pieces as necessary must be accomplished.
The same holds true to a computer software application disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,404,424 and 6,556,211, issued Jun. 11, 2002 and Apr. 29, 2003, respectively, both to S. Davis. Herein again a method for constructing a physical scale model of a structure utilizing a computer is presented. Here too multiple time consuming steps must be taken before the architect or designer is able to begin construction of the scale model. In these patents, templates for component parts must first be printed out, trimmed, and then affixed to suitable model-making materials. Only then can the three-dimensional scale model be constructed.
Thus it is clear that the one form of design-focused activity that currently is not easily accessible to the architecture and home design enthusiast without multiple time consuming intermediary steps is the creation of architectural scale models. No product currently exists in the consumer markets that provides the adult architecture and home design enthusiast with a simplified and efficient modular building block system to create custom architectural scale models of their own dream-house designs similar in appearance to professional scale models produced in architects' offices.
Alternatively, it should be noted, numerous manufacturers of toy and craft items have developed modular construction systems expressly for children with building elements of various shapes and sizes, including: standard building blocks; “Erector Set” brand of beam and connector elements; “Lincoln Log” brand of interlocking wooden log-shaped components; “Archiblocks” brand building system of stacking wooden blocks produced in a range of architectural styles; and “Lego” brand of variable connectable plastic solids. However, none of these currently existing construction toy and craft items utilize a system that appropriately provides the adult architecture and home design enthusiast with the ability to create free-form structures based on their own house designs that are accurately portrayed at the common architectural scale of ¼″=1′-0″, and similar in appearance and function to professionally-constructed architectural scale models. Thus, none of these items are useful to the enthusiast's planning and design objectives because they do not accurately give identifiable physical and visual three-dimensional impressions of prospective full-scale structures.